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YORK – Planet Full of Blues is starting to fall into a really good orbit. Last year, the traditional blues trio from Gloucester County released "Hard Landing," its second full-length album. The CD received enough radio airplay to put two songs — "Big Mouth" and "Snake Lady" — on the national blues charts compiled online by the Roots Music Report. The album itself also did well on the charts. Guitarist Johnny Ray Light and drummer Brock Howe formed the band in 2008 and released a solid eponymous debut disc. Bass player Ron Dameron, a longtime friend of Light's, joined up in 2012 and solidified the band's sound. "We've...

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YORK – Planet Full of Blues is starting to fall into a really good orbit.
Last year, the traditional blues trio from Gloucester County released "Hard Landing," its second full-length album. The CD received enough radio airplay to put two...

Back in June, when I interviewed sax man Dave Koz in advance of the Hampton Jazz Festival, he mentioned that he had done some recording with Trombone Shorty. When I acknowledged that I was unfamiliar with Mr. Shorty's work, Koz was aghast.
He...

I had two memorable encounters with the great R&B singer Bobby "Blue" Bland. One was an uplifting, soul-soaked concert outdoors in Portsmouth. The other was a sweet-but-lackluster 2011 telephone interview.
Bland, who died Sunday at his home...

Queen Esther Marrow -- a Peninsula-born gospel singer who has recorded or toured with Duke Ellington, Bob Dylan and B.B. King -- will perform in Newport News next week to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
Marrow, who...

The Hampton Roads entertainment scene has been in deep freeze for a few weeks, but the thaw is on, folks. A legendary orchestray and a famous blues man are performing in our region this weekend. As always, find all the details at HrTicket.com.
HOW BLUE...

Yes, south Hampton Roads has all the amphitheaters. Still, the Peninsula's been holding its own on the live music front recently. This week I learned that a couple of notable groups are heading this way: The Outlaws and North Sea Gas.The Southern...

The Paschall Brothers, an a cappella gospel quartet based in Chesapeake with ties to Newport News, has won a prestigious prize from the National Endowment for the Arts.The group, led by the Rev. Tarrence Paschall, will receive one of nine 2012 NEA...

More than a week has passed since local bands returned from the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, time enough for the experience to marinate in the minds of musicians.
Members of the Peninsula youth blues band The UnXpected as well as...

Blues legend B.B. King has been forced to cancel the rest of his tour after being diagnosed with dehydration and exhaustion.According to the official website of the 89-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, King fell ill Friday night during a performance...

Johnny Winter, an American blues rock guitarist, vocalist and band leader best known for his virtuoso slide-guitar solos and raspy vocals, was found dead in a hotel room outside Zurich, Swiss police said on Thursday. He was 70.
Along...

On a previous visit to Tallahassee, your travel correspondent found himself snarled in a rush-hour traffic jam, not the best way to conclude an otherwise fine afternoon at Florida's Capitol and the Museum of Florida History.
When I returned last week,...

ATLANTA - Artists and writers draw inspiration from the time-frozen landscapes of the Mississippi Delta. Roots music fans frequent those lonesome highways to feel the spirits of bluesmen past. I go for the food. The Delta is a poor area with a rich...

Murray Gershenz bought his first record when he was 16 and never stopped.
Over the decades, he acquired more than 400,000 and sold them from a Los Angeles store called Music Man Murray. Two floors were crammed to the rafters with cantatas, sonatas,...

George Jones, widely recognized as one of the greatest honky-tonk singers of his time and also one of the most self-destructive, died Friday in Tennessee at age 81.
The County Music Hall of Fame vocalist had been taken to Vanderbilt University Medical...

Elvis Presley called him up in the middle of the night to thank him for a song. John Lennon went to a banquet just so he could sit next to him. Dion said meeting with him was like "being inside a cubicle with a piano and a genius." His name...

By the end of night three of "The Voice's" Season 5 blind auditions, Christina Aguilera had added four new singers to her team, Adam Levine had snagged two, and Blake Shelton and Cee Lo Green had each scooped up three. The lucky (and talented)...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - This port city on the Mississippi River calls itself the birthplace of rock 'n' roll. Its credentials? The Memphis Recording Service, forerunner of Sun Studio, in 1951 recorded "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston & His Delta...

The intersection of DeSoto and State streets here doesn't look like anything special. On the southeast corner of the roads is H Town Custom Wheels. Across DeSoto to the west is Beer & Bud Mart, which faces a Church's Chicken stand. Immediately to...

With Felicia "Snoop" Pearson's guilty plea last week to conspiracy to sell heroin, one question being asked by fans of "The Wire" is how other cast members of the Baltimore-based series are doing. The answer: Several are doing just...

"Soul Train." the televised house that Don Cornelius built on a bedrock of soul, funk and ahead-of-their time dance moves, will celebrate its 40th anniversary Monday in concert at Pritzer Pavilion in Millennium Park.Chicago soul greats Jerry...